Between weeks campaign resources

[Gnaal]

So looking at the end game screen for a single week in the campaign mode, I notice a line stating "cash and resources" which got me thinking: does ending the week with a stock of resources transfer this to the in between weeks recruitment? If so, how are the prices calculated, is it the current prices in the map when it ends? Or the start prices?

I tend to be on auto sell on everything the last two-three days (thus seeing a measly 17k for me, where colony upgrades was 50+k, with those on other maps having above 500k), just spamming as many colony upgrades I can (and bm/optimizations). Maybe it would be better to just hold off the last 6-12 hours or so, and gain a huge resource stock pile with prices which just rise towards the end for a massive between weeks money gain, rather than maybe those last few super pricey colony upgrades.

I.e. cash out a huge short gain, at the cost of a minor decrease in long term income.


Screeny:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1156012375

[Kay of Sauvage]

All your resources are sold off automatically as the game ends, so it doesn't really matter whether you have cash or resources. The selling off will affect the prices, just like selling on your own, so if you have too much of a resource, a lot of it may be sold for $1.

Those final prices (of your game and the other games that happened during the round) determine the prices of resources for the start of the next round.

Yes, you can save your money when the cost of additional colony upgrades is high to give yourself a larger short term gain and less long-term income. And that extra money now could allow you to buy more engineers to help you profit in the coming rounds.

On the other hand, each colonist (requiring 1 habitat and work building) adds 40k to the total weekly income of the map, which is split among the players by percentage of shares in the colony they have. If the investment cost in those colony building is up to 50k each, then that's 100k of investment to earn 40k of additional weekly income, of which you only get a portion of (your share of the colony), but you'll also increase your shares in the colony by 2.

So the factors that cause it to make sense to invest in those final expensive colony upgrades are when you are already dominating the colony shares (so that you get most of the 40k additional income), and the colony is unbalance (high number of habitats, but few work places, so you only need to buy one building to get an additional colonist), and it's earlier in the rounds of the game (so there are more weeks where you will gain the benefits of the colony). Or it's a tight race and you need to buy more colony buildings to win the round.

When it makes least sense to buy the colony buildings is when you only have a smaller share, and the colony is balanced so that you need to buy 2 buildings to get the extra colonist. Like on a 4 player round, you might be in the lead with just 35% share of the colony or something, so you'd only get about 14k of the 40k from additional colonists.

There is a game setting you can turn on when you start a new campaign that causes the game to actually play out the games that you are not involved in. By default, the game just estimates the results or something like that. But if you turn on this setting to simulate those games, your game will freeze for a few seconds at the end of your round (as the game processes running through the other games), and then you will see results that look just like what the AI does in your own games you are involved in. The AI will spend all its money on colony upgrades instead of saving a bunch of cash and resources. I prefer this setting because I like having the other games really played out.

[Gnaal]

Read this on phone and meant to reply as I got home, but forgot :P

Thanks for the feedback, allthough you are wrong in one thing I think. If you increase habitats and workplace by one, you do not get a part of the increase, but the full 40k increase in monthly revenue.

If you part of the "shares" is m, and the total amount of shares is t, you get m/t of the total income, and the total income is t*40. Thus you go from:
m/t * t*40k to (m+1)/(t+1)*(t+1)*40k, or m*40k -> (m+1)*40k

This makes sense because while you may only increase your part of it from eg 3/7 to 4/8, you do this both on the new share and all the old ones. E.g the increase here would be
Old shares increased ratio: (4/8-3/7)*7 = 7*4/8 - 3 = 28/8 - 3 = 3½ - 3 = ½
New share part: 4/8 *1 = ½
½+½=1 new share of income

But thanks for sharing the actual amount per share, the fact that it autosells on game round, and also for notifying me about the "real simulation of ai games", turned that on and it made it way more dynamic.

[Kay of Sauvage]

Ah, you're right about buying colony shares when the colony is balanced. Each pair of shares (habitat and workplace) are worth 40k, and buying additional shares doesn't really "steal" from the other competitors since you add another 40k and thus keep the 40k per pair proportion in place. So there's no diminishing return there.

Though there is a bit of a lower gain for the buyer of the new shares when the colony is unbalanced (many habitats, few workplaces). In that case, the greater your percentage of the colony that you own, the bigger your gain. You can see this easily with an extreme example, like if a competitor bought 40 habitats, and then you buy your first share as the only workplace. You'll add 40k to the total income, but you'll get just 1/41 of that 40k (and 1/41 of the existing total, which isn't much), and the competitor gets the rest.

Though I guess in most realistic cases, it's not going to be that big of a concern since in an unbalanced colony, you'll need just 1 colony building instead of 2 to get the additional income, which should more than make up for any diminished returns due to colony imbalance.

[Gnaal]

Yup, this makes sense.

I'd argue it's not bad because the competitor gets the better deal though, because they bought 40 shares and only get a bit under the income for two (one of each) :P

Rather everyone gets a bad deal in terms of investment efficiency if it's unbalanced at the end.

[sieur_metz]

One more thing - you may choose to buy shares in the colony even if you won't get that much income from it the bonus for having the most share is worth it to you. Minimum mining or quarry would each really be worth it, for instance